


Eulogy for a Traitor

by CaptainMarls



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Referenced Kidnapping, Referenced Torture, Referenced violence, The Light at the End - Freeform, spoilers for the first game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 07:48:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11009076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainMarls/pseuds/CaptainMarls
Summary: Just because he chose the less violent path, does not mean he is a good person.Havelock let loose a monster.





	Eulogy for a Traitor

He knows what this is, and he knows how it ends.

It's always the same with that man, a few guards knocked out or slain along the way, and the target destroyed. Not killed, no, somehow Corvo always makes it so much worse.

When Havelock and the others realized they needed an assassin, a blade to do their bidding, Attano was far from their first choice. The man was brave, and strong and had no qualms with killing when the job called for it, but he was no murderer. Had never needed to sneak around, either. Ultimately they only chose him because they thought he would be easy to sway to their side and they didn't have to pay him.

Breaking him out of Coldridge had been a risk, and Havelock was fully prepared to hire out some of Daud’s men should the bodyguard not survive his escape.

But survive he did. Twelve men of the City Watch died that day, another three were maimed, and seven were sentenced to death for aiding Attano’s escape. And when Samuel came back to the Hound Pits with a tired man stinking of sweat and sewage, Havelock saw his weapon.

None of the following missions had been quite so. . . messy. . . as the first. But there was something unnerving about Corvo, as they had come to think of him, who was a little standoffish but otherwise not unpleasant to live with, freely admitting that he was the one to brand the High Overseer as a heretic.

And so it went. Those who should have been dead went missing, with casual assurances that they were mute and rotting away as slaves or held captive by unhinged nobles. Even Sokolov, tortured with rats while Corvo didn't even blink as the man begged.

The former Lord Regent himself is sitting in Coldridge right now, minus the two fingers that Corvo had brought back with him.

And here is Havelock now, knowing that he's killed Corvo already and that it's not enough to stop the predator from hunting him down anyway.

He monologues to Pendleton and Martin, even as the poison in their drinks takes hold. He had given each only a quarter dose of what he had slipped Corvo, and it's enough to make them both convulse and become still in a matter of minutes. Young Lady Emily pounds on her locked door every once in a while, demanding to be let out. In time, child. In good time.

Havelock envisions the monster he set loose believing it a man. Cold eyes, hidden behind that damned mask of Piero’s, that saw the most wretched traitors of the Empire pleading for their lives, and deciding that killing them was too easy. Eyes like the Void.

Havelock idly wonders how he'll get himself out of this mess, even as he feels Corvo silently watching him from above. He decides not to fool himself.

He knows exactly what this is, and he knows how it ends.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little experiment, written on my phone in about half an hour.
> 
> I'm so used to seeing Corvo as either a cold blooded killer or not hurting anybody besides the targets. I like the moral ambiguity in yhr game, how the non-lethal option isn't necessarily the the better one, and thought I would play with that a bit.


End file.
